Here's a kind of unusual record ad for the comics of the 1970s... mainly because most record ads were for stuff like the Columbia House Record & Tape Club (and those ads tend to scan very badly, so chances are you won't see any of these here).

Friday, July 08, 2005

Firstly, I'm going to be heading in to work early... just how early I haven't determined quite yet. One of the sub-departments within my department needs some extra help, so by getting in early, I should be able to assist there.

Tonight, we have a special guest coming for an overnight visit: Tia the White Boxer, who's just a few weeks older than Krypto, and could be his twin sister! We're hoping to find a new home for her, as she was rescued from a neglectful family, and has been in "foster care."

Tomorrow, of course, will be our weekly Weight Watchers meeting... and to be honest, I'm not sure what to expect. Hopefully I'll at least have lost what I gained last week! After that, we pick up all three dogs (KO, Krypto and Tia) for our regular walk. Then it's home for breakfast, and hopefully some relaxation time while the dogs play some more.

Then, sometime Saturday afternoon, we'll be bringing Tia back to her foster family in Yelm, and then we're going to see the Fantastic Four movie! I'll probably post my thoughts on it sometime either late Saturday night or during the day or evening Sunday.

Of course, there's new Teen Titans and JLU cartoons on Saturday night that I may or may not get a chance to watch this weekend on tape... and I should be able to get the mini-reviews posted of the comics I bought yesterday by Sunday night.

Coming up next week for me is another full week at work, with a birthday party for my mom and my brother Jeff's wife, Kristi, a week from this Sunday... and then Monday, Jessi and I go on our vacation! The birthday party kind of caught me by surprise, as they usually do (I'm terrible at remembering family birthdays). Here I was so excited that yesterday, I found all six sets of the 2nd release of JLU figures, and now I'll have to bring them back to Target and exchange them for a couple of gift cards to give Mom and Kristi. Sheesh! Oh, well, I should be able to find those JLU figures again after that... it will just take some time and luck!

I've already started collecting a few things to post next Sunday so there'll be plenty of new stuff for you guys (just don't read it all on Monday, y'hear?). For starters, there's the first part of my years-old interview with Tony Isabella, a very much abridged version of which originally appeared in Comic Book Artist #13. This covers Tony's start in comics, as well as his work on Marvel horror books. The rest of the interview, covering stuff like his work on Daredevil, Power Man, the Champions, Black Lightning, and so on, seems to be lost or misplaced (but hopefully is on a backup disc somewhere). The published version of this interview was just a few pages, and the portion I'll have for you will be much longer!

Also being prepared is the first several chapters of "Doc Kent," which I alluded to in a previous post... checking what I'd written, I found I left off writing it in mid-sentence! Didn't even finish the one chapter! So I'll have to find the time to at least finish that chapter and then post what I'd written so far.

And of course, there'll be the usual scans of comics ads of the late 60s/early 70s... and I will get that list of links put together that I promised, too!

In the 1970s, Power Records did a whole slew of book and record sets... and I wish they were released on CD with TPB reprints of the stories included! I used to have a lot of these... although not this one.

Here's an item that I used to have... and that I wish would be re-released in CD! It's a full-length record album that has the entirety of Fantastic Four #1, performed more or less like a radio program... except that where there were sound effects in the original comic, someone was reading them out loud! That's right, the crew encounter the cosmic rays, and someone intones, "Rac-Tac-Tac!"

Saw on Mark Evanier's News From Me and Cartoon Brew that Norm Prescott, one of the founders of Filmation, has just passed away. Unfortunately, Norm wasn't one of the people interviewed for the He-Man DVD that I did a transcript for... but still, I couldn't go without at least mentioning his passing.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

OK, chances are, you're reading this first... and if you're not, you may as well scroll down to the comics ads below... or read this and find out what I didn't end up doing...

Anyway... Thursday morning, I'll probably not post anything... in fact, it'll be Thursday night before I post anything here again. As I alluded to before, Thursday is payday, and I have a bunch of stuff to do both before and after work!

But Thursday night, I begin a series of Fantastic Four-related posts, due to the release of the new movie, which I hope to get a chance to see this weekend and offer my thoughts on it.

Once the FF posts are done, it'll be business as usual here... although I should be able to resume the mini-reviews of the comics I'll buy Thursday!

My eBay auctions are beginning to wind down... there were several that never sold, and I won't be relisting them again. There are still nine items closing over the weekend, and most of them are bid and win auctions. So what am I going to do with the stuff that didn't sell? Well, I'll probably save them for the time being, and maybe offer them as prizes for a contest of some kind in my Cover Stories column at WF Comics.

It doesn't look as though I'll be able to arrange to pre-create posts to appear during my vacation later this month, so the weekend before I'll just post stuff like crazy, I guess!

It's most passing strange to me to see this ad for the Easy-Bake oven in DC comics... I mean, I could buy Kenner advertising them in, say, Gold Key or Archie Comics (let's face it, they were more girl-friendly, for the most part).

Still and all, it's interesting to see the comics format used to hawk this stuff!

Time for a tryptich (geez, did I even spell that right?) of ads... because, you see, this ad for MPC's Pirates of the Caribbean model kits was actually the middle four pages of the comics it appeared in! So here's the first page, and the second and third pages were a spread, so they'll be a single image, followed by the last page.

Of course, because the most recent posts appear first, this would appear last as you read it... unless I get sneaky and post them backwards... which I'm doing!

I can't help but think that I've posted at least the top half of this page before, with the monster size monsters... but at least you shouldn't have seen all the stuff in the Johnson-Smith ad below that.

Yeah, like so many Americans, I have an unfortunate tendency to live from paycheck to paycheck. It's not always the case... there've been more than a few times when I had a hundred dollars or more left over from the last paycheck when the new paycheck came in... as well as other times I had money saved up (such as when I was in Wisconsin, working full time, doing auctions online, and also doing transcription work... all the transcription and auction money went to a separate bank account to be saved for vacations or emergencies).

It does suck, however, when your bank balance online says you have plenty of money, but you know a check just hasn't gone through yet... like the rent check. My habit had always been that when I got paid and the rent was due during the next two weeks, I'd go ahead and pay the rent immediately, instead of waiting for the first of the month.

However, since Jessi gets paid on the last day of the month, and we each pay half of the rent, I was waiting on her check to get the rent paid (which we do by her writing me a check for her half, I deposit it, and then pay the full rent). As of this morning, the rent check hasn't gone through yet... and checking my account online, Banfield Wellness (the monthly fee for Krypto's wellness program that covers the majority of his medical care) has started the pre-authorization process. So while it seems there's plenty in the bank, I know there isn't... at least, not until my direct deposit goes through sometime between midnight tonight and eight tomorrow morning.

Ridiculous, isn't it? And yet I know that the majority of Americans go through the same thing all the time... even going so far as to float checks that they don't have the available funds for (and at least I don't do that).

To be honest, though, the most frustrating thing about the current situation is that, looked at logically, Jessi and I moving in together should be saving money! After all, the rent on this house is quite a bit less than we were each paying combined, and our grocery expenses should be down, too (to be honest, we were both throwing out food that went bad from our respective fridges). Other bills are smaller than they were individually, too... of course, there's the added expense for water and garbage, but that doesn't really make that kind of difference.

I think that it all boils down to the fact that for most of us, if we have money, we tend to spend it. And if we get a little extra money, we find other stuff to spend it on.

Of course, I'll exemplify this whole thing tomorrow morning, by leaving the house early and going off to spend my newly-deposited paycheck on the last two weeks' comic books, and the aforementioned half-birthday present for Jessi. And maybe one or two other things I've been thinking about getting.

And then after work tomorrow, it's grocery shopping time! But at least tonight, I can at least take stock of what we have here already and start to figure out what we need to make what we already have, and put some cash aside for the vacation.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Last one of these tonight... I should be able to pump out a few more entries in the morning, however!

Anyway, here's a bunch of Woodstock jewelry... and to be honest, as big a fan as I am of 60s music, I've never felt that big a connection to Woodstock. Never watched the movie of it, don't even recall for sure who performed there and who didn't!

Here's a side-by-side pair of Marvel house ads... now, Captain America's Bicentennial Battles was one that I fondly remember, because I actually bought that one off the newsstand! I still can picture Mr. Buda (later renamed the Contemplator, and designated as one of the Elders of the Universe) sending Cap throughout American history... presumably to teach him something, but I don't recall what that was (hey, it's been decades since I read it).

Crazy... well, you'll be seeing a lot of house ads for Crazy in the near future, but not a lot of comments from me, because so far as I remember, I never bought an issue! Mad, I sometimes bought... Cracked I also picked up... Crazy? Probably never.

My final week of eBay sales is going on now... actually, less than a week, with the last items going for a little over five days from the time I'm writing this. Nothing new with these listings, just some relists of items that didn't sell the first time -- you can see the list by clicking here. It's mostly posters... some comics posters, some Beatles posters, a Daffy Duck "Duxorcist" poster, and a few sets of Godzilla import keychains. With only a few exceptions, these have reduced starting bids, plus the first bidder will win them thanks to "Buy It Now!"

Plans are proceeding apace for Jessi and my vacation in Seaside. Naturally, we're taking Krypto and KO with us! Hopefully, we won't end up with a third dog for the trip, which might be a bit unmanageable...

Why a third dog? Well, Sunday was our latest Boxer Meet-Up (you can read about the Olympia Boxers Yahoo group here), and a woman who has five boxers of her own who lives in Yelm had a sixth boxer, which was the only one she brought with her, an eight-month-old white female boxer named Tia who could be Krypto's twin, save that her nose is completely black (we are expecting Krypto's nose will lose what white it has by the time he's full grown). Well, Tia was just delightful... she was a rescued dog that had been woefully neglected, but she's recovered from that just fine, and got along great with the other boxers there. Jessi's arranging for her to spend Friday night and all day Saturday with us, so we can see how she interacts with our two, and we're hoping we can find someone in the Olympia area who will want her and take proper care of here, and who will also bring her to our future meet-ups! If we don't... well... I'm afraid that Jessi will become very attached to her, and want to keep her for ourselves. Tia is adorable, I must admit... I'm just not sure if we're ready for three boxers charging around the house!

Fourth of July here was noisy as heck... but our dogs managed to deal with it, for the most part... Krypto was entirely unaffected by all the explosions, while KO was fine so long as one of us were present. Our neighbors, Ned and Jane, have six dogs, and their dogs (except for their newest arrival) seemed to have a problem with it, though... but it's over for another year now, and things are getting back to normal around the neighborhood!

Friday will be Jessi's "half-birthday." That's an idea I came up with because our regular birthdays are so close to the major winter holidays (mine is in November, only a few weeks before Thanksgiving, and hers is just after New Year's), and we tend to have our budgets stretched a bit tightly then anyway. Since Jessi paid half the cost of getting Krypto, I told her she needn't worry about my half-birthday present... but now as the day of her half-birthday approaches... I find myself stumped as to what to get her. Thanks to my budget being so tight lately, I wasn't able to do any shopping in advance, so whatever I get will have to be found Thursday or Friday morning before going to work.

Oh, a minor correction on the earlier post about the Energized Spider-Man... apparently the arms aren't poseable at all... for all intents and purposes, it was a statue! I realized this while looking at photos on other sites of the actual toy (of course, now one of you will read this and say, "Nope, the arms *could* move... everybody just poses theirs the same way for photos!").

I'll be starting to prepare a post in advance for putting up on my vacation, which will be comprised of links to various sites which may be of interest to you guys. I'll have to see if Blogger will let me schedule posts in advance!

Here's an ad for the Johnson Smith Company again... and it gives me another excuse to plug them via this link (and if you use it and buy something, I earn a small commission, for which I thank you in advance).

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About This Geek

I have been a Navy journalist, word processor, graphic designer, medical assisting student, cook, and truck driver, and am currently an eBay seller as well as an employee at a big retail store. I have been and always will be into comics, sf, tv, cartoons, monsters, oldies rock, and lots of other stuff.
If your blog has a link to this blog, let me know and I'll add you to my linklist!
You can contact me at waffyjon@comcast.net